1
This morning I am fretful and restless. Kitty won't do as I say, which always provokes me. I tell her that we will walk into Meryton together, yes, but after that we'll go our separate ways. She will spend the forenoon at Aunt and Uncle's. I will make for Penwold Grange. An interesting civic affair will take place there today, an announcement which I hope will mean great things for our future.
"Why can't I come along with you, Lydia?"
"Because I need you to go to Auntie's," I say to Kitty. I am tired of having to explain things to her. If she would just obey me without question, it would be so much simpler.
"Your mysterious meeting at Penwold Grange?" Kitty says. "I know all about that. It is to plan the Harvest Festival."
"Then you know some, but not all, and that is the very definition of ignorance. Mr. Pope says a little knowledge is a dangerous thing."
"I wouldn't go even if you asked me," Kitty says, miffed. "Your meeting will be for men-folk, and you will be turned away."
"It is not my meeting, Kitty," I say. "I didn't summon every potentate in town together."
Kitty giggles at the idea, then turns back serious. "And if it is all men, then what?"
"Oh, I won't have any problem," I say. "I am fifteen years old, and already I know this to be true: men take for granted that a pretty young woman is in want of company."
She giggles again and tells me that I shock her. She is always saying this. Kitty is a year older than I am. Her main accomplishment in life, as far as I can tell, is to be thoroughly shocked by all the things I say.
I don't tell her that I hear rumors. For weeks now, in the town shops, around the water-pump in the square, many whispers, many lips, sounding the same magic word.
"Regiment."
A regiment! A King's militia regiment is to be quartered in Meryton.
I believe it to be the Lincolnshire Home Guards, but I am not yet certain. If so, that is a deliciousness to surpass all deliciousness.
Can it be true? To find out, I must find a way to be at the meeting at Penwold Grange.
Tuesday forenoon in a week of warm fall days, September in the year of our Lord 1811, a glorious autumn full of possibility. Kitty and I are in our bed chamber at Longbourn. We dress for town, I in my green-striped gown with my pretty little Spencer jacket, Kitty in her hand-me-down muslin frock with a red shawl.
In the midst of our dressing Kitty forgets to be perturbed over our plans for the day. She is such a dear thing, but a thought never stays long in her head. I hasten to admit that I sometimes imitate her stupidity. Especially at home, it is a great advantage to be thought of as silly. I find that by this charade I can enjoy a great deal of liberty, so much more than if Mamma (and especially Papa) believed I was intelligent and scheming.
Mamma enters to our bed chamber like a great fluttering ostrich. "Oh, girls, you have dressed," she says. She has a great talent for stating the obvious. "I hope you don't think of town."
"We are going to Aunt and Uncle's this morning," I say.
"It won't do," she says. "You must stay home and help me with the stitching."
Is there anything more tiresome than a mother?
"When we were visiting last Thursday," I say, "we promised the Phillipses we would come back on Tuesday morning. Isn't that so, Kitty?"
Kitty allows a guilty flush to cross her face as she tells a lie. "That's so, Mamma."
"And here it is Tuesday morning, so off to Aunt and Uncle's we will go," I say.
"I suppose Lizzy and Jane might help," Mamma says. "Or I could go with you and put off the work another day."
"Good-bye, Mamma," I say. "We'll stay for luncheon at the Phillipses and be back in the afternoon."
As we leave Kitty and I meet Papa at the front door.
"Off to town?" he says.
"Are we?" I say.
"Well, if you don't know, I certainly don't," Papa says.
I kiss his brow while he mutters a phrase I have heard a thousand times in my life: "Such foolish young girls."
Once we arrive in Meryton, Kitty makes a small fuss once again when I seek to disengage myself, sending her off to Aunt and Uncle's. But I am firm and am soon off alone on the dusty quarter-mile wagon-track to Penwold Grange. Gigs, coaches and buggies, one after another, stop to offer me rides, but I wave them off. As if I would faint from the exertion of the short walk!
From the strange events that transpire afterwards, I have come to suspect that my anticipation that morning arose from some foretelling of the future. I remember clearly feeling as light as a lark. It could be explained as nothing more than my looking forward to news of a military detachment arriving in the vicinity. But also—and here is the odd thing—I had a slight sense of fearfulness, too.
Silly goose. What could possibly exist in this world to strike terror in a poor girl's heart? Nothing. An English farmhouse, surrounded by paddocks and yards and pigsties. The most ordinary place in the world. The only danger is that I might be rendered bored to death by the proceedings I am about to attend.
All the carriages that passed me before on the lane have now pulled up in the courtyard of the farm. The farmers Penwold (there are three brothers, each more round and red-faced than the next) stand at the gate greeting the local grandees. I don't wish to be caught up in that business, so I find my away around the yard to the side doors that open off the Grange's main hall.
There the men of the town gather. The men, and a few women, too, for some of the husbands have brought along their families. The three Penwold farmwives play host with small beer and honey-dipped breads. Not to call attention to my presence, I drift in quietly through the kitchen garden, taking my place amidst the assembled throng.
It is the easiest thing in the world. No one notices me. I stand behind Carter Luce's brood, getting lost among the man's four young sons, three older daughters and his half-blind maiden aunt. I am the youngest maid in the hall, and I am not too modest to judge myself the prettiest, too.
Yes, yes, the town officials do speak of the Harvest Festival: The sheaves to be brought in, the bonfire, the pageant. As I fear, boredom settles on me like sleep.
"Get to it, get to it, get to it," I mutter.
"Miss?" Carter Luce says.
I move away from him. I will never know what odd prompting makes me turn my head and glance across the hall. Somehow, some urgency falls upon me from that direction. I actually feel my face warm, as if a beam of sunlight is directed upon it. But there is no window there, no sun.
Instead, there is a man's face.
A most pleasing, handsome face, too, as much at home among the Meryton farmers as a unicorn in a herd of donkeys. He stands halfway up on a stairway leading into the interior of the farmhouse, so that he is set a few feet above the rest of the crowd. He is elevated in other ways, too, by wearing a fine worsted-wool tailcoat, as well as by his forthright, narrow shoulders, so unlike a laborer's, and by his gorgeous halo of brown curls.
He is an unlikely angel, descended from on high to show himself in this rude, homely farmhouse.
But it isn't his appearance that makes me notice him, makes me turn, makes me blush and start to tremble.
He stares straight at me.
I feel as though I am pinned by his gaze.
There in the crowded hall, we are alone, he and I. The blood rushes to my face. I want to look away but cannot.
I have a thought, a stupid, silly thought, that I wish Kitty were here, so that she may tell me if I am imagining things.
He will not stop! Is it really me that he watches with such intensity?
Flustered, I look away, glancing behind me to see if there is some Aphrodite standing there. It is she he stares at, the goddess, not me.
But when I look back, his coal-black eyes still fix on me.
My thoughts come at a tumble. I move through the crowd. I feel as though I am running away. But if I want to leave, nothing holds me here. To get away I merely need to step back through the open side doors, out into the garden and down the lane.
Instead, I attempt to get lost among many dozens of people who have gathered in the hall. Surely he will give up his insolent stare. Surely he will let me go.
My heart pounds. I move left, toward a stairway that leads to the Grange's second story. Not taking his eyes from me, he comes off from the small set of steps across the hall and moves along the far wall. If we would both proceed the way we are going, we would meet somewhere in the back of the hall, where the speakers are standing.
I close my eyes, standing stock still. It must be just some silly fantasy of mine. I open my eyes back up, convinced he is not looking my way at all. Although he is—his eyes bore right into me!
Yes! It's true!
An inner voice orders me to call for help, raise the alarm. I open my mouth, but words refuse to come out. Just my parched breath, ah, ah, ah.
And in that instant, the fantasy passes. I look again, and I see that the one I considered some sort of demon lover is nothing of the sort. He is merely a pleasant-looking man who stares not at me, but past me, at the men who are speaking in front of the hall.
His expression is intense, to be sure. And his features are as fine as I thought before. He stands out, yes—well, among all these stupid, cattle-like Hertfordshire planters, what well-born man would not?
One of the Penwold wives pass by. "May I, madam? For my father." I take one of the mugs of beer she carries and fade back into the crowd. My thirst is terrific. So is my shame. I think myself a silly girl, as silly as my father ever calls me. I feel as I did when I answered wrong in church school, mistaking Ezekiel for Samuel, and the pastor laughed at me.
I gather my wits about me. I will hurry to town, to the Phillipses, and reunite with Kitty. All will be well, all will be normal. This foolish episode will be something Kitty and I will marvel at. But I shall not let her laugh at me.
Two things happen at once. Suddenly the man with the narrow shoulders and brown curls stands beside me. It is as though he is magic, and can transport himself through the air. At the same time, I hear the words "regiment" and Lincolnshire being pronounced by the speaker at the front of the hall, and the crowd breaks out into huzzahs.
I instantly lose any composure I had regained. The taste of the small beer dies in my mouth. Waves of blushing and warmth pass over my whole body, not just my face but my throat, my thighs, my breasts. He looks at me, an expression on his face that I cannot read. It is not insolence, really, though some would consider it so. Confidence, certainty.
He doesn't speak. Why won't he speak?
What? What? What do you want of me, sir?
Again, I feel the urge to cry out. A Penwold wife passes me, but she is a creature in a dream. They are all unreachable, every person in the room. I am alone with him.
Then, right in the middle of Penwold Grange, my soul emits a moan, a strange cry that combines a sigh and a whimper. It is a half scream of the sort that a lamb might produce, calling for its mother. I have never made such a sound in my life, I am sure, even as an infant.
The folks around us turn and stare. His expression does not change. Perhaps a shadow of smirk plays about the corners of his mouth.
A cri de coeur, the French would call it. A cry from the heart.
My moan is enough to break the spell he holds over me. I turn and run, pushing through the crowd, panicked and confused. Staggering out the front door into the courtyard, I feel light-headed, as though I might vomit. I find myself among a gaggle of rude boys, the drivers and footmen who wait upon their masters inside. A few of them laugh coarsely at the sight of me. My hair has come undone. I must look a mess.
"Hey, girlie," one of them shouts.
I hurry away. The dusty lane that was level when I approached the Grange now has a slope to it, and I feel as though I am rushing downhill. The linden trees on either side of the lane reach out as if to grab at me.
"I can't—I can't…" I don't know what I'm saying, I don't know what it is I can't do. I walk blind for a spell, halfway to town, until I slow and catch my breath.
Now anger overwhelms me. This man, this stranger, this male. Who is he to make a young girl lose her mind? He must have all the morals of a highwayman. A tormentor of the weak and defenseless. I have often heard of such men, my mother has warned me against them, but by the grace of God have never before encountered one.
Impudence, disrespect, rudeness and cheek!
Boiling inside, muttering to myself, I find that I have passed by Meryton and am halfway to our home at Longbourn.
This is not good. If I arrive at home alone, without Kitty, I shall be scolded by my mother. She will have me go into the yard to cut a willow branch, and I will be whipped about the legs.
So on top of all that has happened to me I will be criticized by my family. Father will call me a silly girl again. It is so unfair. I who have done nothing. The excitement I should rightly feel at the news that a King's regiment is to be posted to Meryton has been ruined. Why do such things always happen?
Starlings and wrens twitter uselessly in the sunlit meadow through which I pass. I am angry at the world, angry at myself. The best thing for me to do is to retrace my steps, return to town, reunite with Kitty at my aunt's. Then I could return to Longbourn House without recrimination and fault.
But I keep walking on. Some force propels me forward. I feel the need to run to my room, shut myself away from everyone. I want to think. What just happened? Was it only a silly girl's imagination? I shall be good; I shall never go out in public alone again. Mother is right. There are dangers abroad waiting to snare innocence in a web of shame.
Oh, Lydia! Foolish Lydia!
Suddenly I am aware of how vulnerable I am, alone in the countryside. I feel weak. There is no one around, no laborers in the far fields, no wagons on the homely farm lane. I could cry out here and there would be no hear me.
"Help!" I say, but my voice sounds small. "Help me!" The dry buzzing of insects drowns out my cry.
I pass a high post-and-rail fence, its poles set close together to make a paddock wall. A path comes along it to meet our lane.
Along the path, astride a dark gray horse, rides the handsome man with the brown curls.
2
How has he arrived here? It is impossible. He was back there, at Penwold Grange, and now he has materialized here. How can a man be two places at once?
A ballad sung around the campfire tells the tale of the Demon Lover. A devil in disguise, who lures women to their doom. Even as a young child, I always found it frightening, and the figure of the Demon Lover has often worked its way into my nightmares. In the ballad, he brings the lady out on the ocean in a golden ship. She spies a sunny shore far off, but he says, "Yon are the hills of heaven, where you will never go."
Instead, he breaks the ship apart with his hand—his terrible power has always been terrifying to me—and the two go down into the dark sea to drown.
Now here is the Demon Lover, trotting down the path, come to gather me in.
I stand stock still. Everything tells me I must run, but I cannot move.
He guides his horse forward, riding up on me. It is a great huge beast, eighteen hands high. I see how the man places himself and his horse athwart the lane. At my back there is the high fence, cutting off my retreat. I am lost, I am surely lost.
"Did you cry out, milady?"
I can't speak. My mouth is dry as dust. I shake my head, wishing him to ride on and leave me.
The smell and heat of horseflesh chokes my nostrils. Ugh, it is awful. I realize with horror that he has mounted himself on a stallion, and that the stallion is engorged. The repulsive spectacle of the charger's member fills my sight, speckled pink and black, enormous and growing, emerging from its sheath like a snake.
"Let me go, sir," I manage.
"What's that you say? Speak up, woman!"
He calls me a woman, when I am just a girl. He has a crop in his hand, a lethal little leather instrument. He taps the stallion's withers with it, and beast moves so close I must take a step back.
"Let me go on my way!" I try to shout it out, but my voice sounds small.
"Yes?"
"Please," I murmur.
"Please, what?" he says.
"Please, sir, let me go on."
"Why, I am not stopping you."
His voice is deep and well-timbred.
"Go on, if you want to," he says. Again, on the surface his words appear harmless, encouraging even. But I hear the hint of command. If I want to? Of course I want to! I want to get away from you, sir, and proceed to the safety of my home and family.
He spurs his mount and jerks the reins at the same time, making the stallion dance next to me, its hooves striking the earth. An expanse of quivering, sweaty flank fills my sight. Below, the horse's huge proud cock. A weak feeling comes over me, a sort of bodily hopelessness that rises from my legs and rushes to obliterate all calm thought.
"Oh, have pity on me, sir!"
It is a wail, but it falls on unhearing ears. Still he dances the stallion near me. For a long moment I feel I must die.
"Up," he says.
"What?"
"Up!"
What? What is he asking? But he is not asking, he is ordering me.
I move numbly forward. I have turned meek. I am in his hands. He will place me on this huge snorting beast. He will take me away deep into the forest. He will ride me out onto the ocean in a golden ship. He will split me in half with his bare hands.
"No," he says.
No, what? What does he want me to do? I have lost Lydia. I am no longer she. If he tells me to fly, I will flap my arms.
"Up," he says again. Then he reaches down with his crop and moves me backward. He doesn't hit me with the whip, just uses it as a stiff instrument to guide me.
Toward the fence.
"Up and over," he says. "You want to go, you wish to get away from me, that is the way you must do it."
My mind has gone dull. I don't understand. He wants me to climb these rails? They make an uncertain ladder, closely set, eight feet high.
"Up," he says again. He rides his stallion closer, forcing me backward.
A sense of my own weakness overpowers me.
As though I am sleepwalking I turn toward the fence. Placing my two hands at shoulder height, gripping the rough poles, I insert one foot on its lower rungs and begin to climb.
"That's right," he says. "You can do it."
This would be a simple enough act, had my strength not totally deserted me. In fact, I have sported along these very same rails many times before in my childhood, never thinking twice about it. Now the thing has turned monstrous.
Halfway up, I stop, suspended.
"Go on," he says.
I can't.
He reaches out with his crop and swats my backside. The whip makes a crisp, hollow thwack. Even through my gown and my petticoats, I feel the sting. It surprises me so that it has the opposite effect he intends, making it impossible for me to move.
Again, another sharp, stinging thwack. Another.
"Get up!"
He spanks me again and again. I climb the last few rungs, throwing my leg over the top-rail, lying athwart it lengthwise and holding on. We are even with each other now, his handsome, impassive face only a few feet away.
He won't stop. His crop finds me, stinging my backside.
Moaning and whimpering, I shinny forward on the rail, sliding ahead, feeling the rough wood grind between my legs as I inch along the pole.
A physical sensation comes upon me, some kind of shuddering delirium of the body that I have never felt before. A vibration spreads out from my privates and wholly takes me over. I wonder if I am dying, if I having a fit, if I will ever recover. I am falling, even though I am still caught atop the fence. A warm gushing rises in my groin. My insides are on fire.
I hear his voice, whispering a quick spill of words in my ear, but in my confusion the sense is lost.
"Pity me," I say. Then I say it again, murmuring "pity me" over and over. The sensation of pleasure that grips me now subsides, rises again, and again becomes the hot, swollen feeling that is heavenly and terrifying at the same time. It recedes, little by little loosening its hold.
Then it is finished.
There I am, still lying on my precarious perch along the top-rail. It's as though I have filled up and burst, a bloom that has flowered and withered and fallen all at once. My backside burns. It is red from spanking as it has often been before in my childhood.
Suddenly I realize I am alone. I have the vague awareness of the sound of his stallion's hoof beats, fading off down the lane. The sound of birdsong returns, the buzz of insects.
I cling to the fence-rail for a good long time, pressing my groin into it, feeling as though if I let go, I will plummet to the ground. One foot is braced between a post and rail, and I steady myself with this. I feel dreamy, almost sleepy. Perhaps I will nap here like some tortoise in the sun.
"Good gracious, Lydia, whatever are you doing up there?"
Kitty's voice. I turn to see my sister staring up at me, standing below in the lane. I am embarrassed, and give a mortified laugh.
"I tried to climb over," I say. "I got caught."
"Let me help you down," Kitty says.
"No, no," I say. "Just let me stay here a minute."
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